Women's refuges told they must admit men

Charities for battered women have been threatened with the loss of their
funding unless they help male victims of
domestic
violence, under new
equality laws.

Women's Aid, the domestic violence charity whose
patrons include the prime minister's wife, Sarah Brown, says its female-only
services are essential to reassure battered women and children that they
will be safe. However, some local authorities are demanding that services
such as counselling and outreach be opened to both sexes.

Fiona Mactaggart, the former Home Office minister, said some refuge
services had lost grants or contracts in what she said was an "unintended
consequence" of changes in equality law.

"There are some local authorities who interpret equalities to mean that a
refuge has to provide for men, not only for women," said Mactaggart,
co-chair of the women's parliamentary Labour party, a grouping of female
MPs. "There are some stupidnesses developing in the system that nobody
intended."

Although 15% of men say they have been physically assaulted by a partner,
according to the most recent British Crime Survey, the extent to which men
suffer domestic violence is disputed. Surveys have suggested that many
allegations of being assaulted by women are made by men facing prosecution
for domestic violence.

Nicola Harwin, chief executive of Women's Aid, said its branches were
still allowed to exclude men from refuges, but were being told when council
contracts came up for tender that they must provide services such as advice
and outreach to men or lose their funding. Decades of progress in setting up
refuges were being undermined, she said. In some cases contracts were being
given to inexperienced providers who would deal with both sexes but did not
follow important safeguards to prevent violent partners continuing to harass
victims.

"There is one independent domestic violence advocacy service where they
were dealing with both male and female victims, sometimes in the same
relationship. When a man says, 'Actually she is abusing me, not me abusing
her', obviously that has to be treated seriously by police, but you
shouldn't have the same person dealing with them."

She said that many volunteers and staff at domestic violence charities
were survivors of abuse for whom it was important that the organisation was
all-female. "We are going to see a shrinking of provision. Women do
appreciate being engaged in women-only organisations. When you have been
disempowered and had no control of your life [through domestic violence]
it's important for a lot of women to see that this is an organisation run by
women for women."

Women's Aid refers male callers to groups specialising in male victims.
But men's rights groups say services for them are much patchier.

Mactaggart wants ministers to resolve the problems unwittingly created by
the so-called gender
equality duty, which requires local authorities to ensure that services do
not discriminate on grounds of sex. The Government Equalities Office said
councils were being overzealous about the new duty, adding: "This cannot be
an excuse [for cutting services]. This interpretation of the duty is law."

Notice how they make the bland allegation that well, its men who are
being charged who make this allegation.

It probably is true, police the world over, routinely arrest men when
they are the victims, Ottawa Ontario is a classic example, its normal for a
man to have blood dripping down his face to be arrested for assaulting a
wife who has next to no marks on her. These cases actually go to trial,
believe it or not, at exactly the same time in the same building where
judges are "getting rid of matters for trial" by either intimidating the
parties that "they are old school" and will make a decision to suit a mother
or, if he is really insisting on a trial, Ottawa supervisory judges give the
OK for the female party to bring a motion for "summary judgment", that is NO
TRIAL, they , the judges don't wont trials and avoid them like the plague
unless of course, its a trumped up criminal charge that really is a custody
issue that is decided when the police arrest the father on no evidence.,
just what they call "probable grounds".